November 18, 2013

See the the previous post for the context and analysis of the quote. This is a more light-hearted exploration of "floaters."

1. "Float On," by The Floaters... a hit song from 1977. Lyrics here. Each Floater — Ralph, Charles, Paul, Larry — has his own verse in which he begins by announcing his astrological sign and proceeds to tell use what kind of women he likes. Ralph, the Aquarius, likes "a woman who loves her freedom," etc.

2. "Float On," by Modest Mouse, is a completely different song. It's about not worrying about your problems: "Even if things get heavy, we'll all float on/Alright already, we'll all float on alright."

3. The top definition for "floater" at Urban Dictionary is: "a social mastermind who wavers between members of one particular clique or between multiple cliques in general, pitting people against one another and leeching out information without seeming like a threat." Definitions #2, #3, and #5 refer to buoyant fecal matter. Definition #4 refers to those bits in your eyes, and #6 is "A dead body found in the water."

5. Bob Dylan has a song called "Floater (Too Much To Ask)." The word
"floater" does not appear in the song, though Bob appears in a boat in
verse #3 fishing for bullheads, and in verse #12, there's a reference to
"rebel rivers," which include the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee.

The thing it recalled to me, after the inevitable toilet imagery, was a very old George Will column including a delightful capsule summary of The Graduate. (The material in quotes is all paraphrase from memory, sorry.) Benjamin returns from "a gift (an expensive college education) to another gift (a new car)," but spends his summer not looking for work, but floating around the pool. Then "floating Benjamin" encounters Mrs. Robinson, who (seeing that he's going to need some help getting with the program here) "unwraps herself and provides painstaking operating instructions." And so on.

I had a quick negative reaction to the pie floater, too. But after thinking about it, it might not be too bad - the crust acts as a crouton, the spicy, hot pork filling a nice substitute for the ham my mother always used to put in her split pea soup.

The thing is - it would be terrible fast food. I hate eating anything wet and sloppy like that from a Styrofoam container with a plastic spoon.

"Oh, excuse me!’ she gasped, and blushed, and fled. But ah, the fart hung heavy in the humid air, long past the lady’s flight. It hung, it lolled, it wisped; it miscegenated with the smoke of my cigar, caressed the beading oil on the skin of my nose, lay obscenely on the flat of my desk, among my briefs of papers. It was everywhere, but I had learned, even then, to live with nature and my fellow animals. I didn’t flinch; I didn’t move. Through its dense invisible presence I regarded my oracular wall, and this time fruitfully...” ~ The Floating Opera by John Barth